John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: Quotes about the world

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works. Explore interesting quotes on world.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: 156 quotes112 likes

“I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L. R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed. Also many of the older legends are purely 'mythological', and nearly all are grim and tragic: a long account of the disasters that destroyed the beauty of the Ancient World, from the darkening of Valinor to the Downfall of Númenor and the flight of Elendil.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

No. 247: To Colonel Worskett (20 September 1963)
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

“That there’s some good in this world. And it’s worth fighting for.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Context: Frodo : What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for

“The journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Context: PIPPIN: I didn't think it would end this way.
GANDALF: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.
PIPPIN: What? Gandalf? See what?
GANDALF: White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
PIPPIN: Well, that isn't so bad.
GANDALF: No. No, it isn't.

“Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Mythopoeia (1931)

“I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories

On Fairy-Stories (1939)

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

No. 142: letter to his friend Robert Murray, S.J. (December 1953)
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

“As for what you say or hint of 'local' conditions: I knew of them. I don't think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately], not many retain that generous sentiment for long.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

To Christopher Tolkien in South Africa
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)